The Western Australian Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA) has defended its use of the SMS emergency warning and evactuation system after residents panned the system's effectiveness during the Perth fire crisis.

Google account holders will soon be seeing an invitation to opt-in to a 2-step verification sign-on feature being offered by the company, a online deadbolt that makes it harder for someone to hack into your account.The feature, which has been available for Apps customers and is now being offered to all account holders, adds a second step of entering a code that is sent to the user's mobile phone - either by phone call, SMS text or a smartphone app.

It's generally accepted that a smartphone is still a phone, and that it does all the 'phone-y' stuff that we expect of it, like making and receiving calls and sending and receiving SMS messages. Right? Well, not for handsets based on the Android operating system.